The current U.S. health care system is, in large part, an outgrowth of health care institutions founded by Catholic sisters who emigrated from Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Upon their arrival in the United States, many groups of sisters had only a few dollars and no formal medical training. Still, they visited the sick and set up informal hospitals during deadly epidemics. They even embarked by horse and wagon into the frontiers of the wild west, facing coyotes, violence, heat, and dehydration.
As their efforts to care for the sick expanded, the sisters invested in the construction of hospitals, where they served as nurses and administrators. They integrated explicit religious practice into clinical care, and their habits were reminders of their Catholicity. In these times, no one questioned what made their institutions Catholic. The Catholic identity engrained and sustained through the presence of the sisters was so obvious that it was not a topic of conversation.
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